ThinkPad ACPI Driver Picking Up New Features With Linux 5.17

For those running Linux on Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, the upcoming Linux 5.17 cycle is set to bring a few improvements to the "thinkpad_acpi" driver.

Thanks to developers Ognjen Galic and Thomas Weißschuh, the ThinkPad ACPI driver is adding support for inhibit charge behavior if wanting to temporarily disable charging support for ThinkPads allowing this behavior through the system's embedded controller (EC).

Similarly, there is also now force discharge support if wanting to force the battery to change and again contingent upon EC support from the ThinkPad.

Meanwhile Red Hat's Hans de Goede has a number of fixes for the ThinkPad ACPI driver for this next cycle. Among the assortment of minor items is allowing to control the LED in the ThinkPad logo that is found on the lid of various laptops.

The various ThinkPad ACPI driver improvements are currently queued up as part of the platform-drivers-x86.git's for-next branch, making it material for the Linux 5.17 merge window opening in January.